


A feeling like devotion

by rosemeister



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Character Study, Crimson Flower Route, F/F, homoerotic knightly devotion, ingrid being torn between duty & her feelings for like 5 years, tfw you betraying your country for a pretty girl has consequences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:55:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23104333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosemeister/pseuds/rosemeister
Summary: The Emperor’s gauntlets are cold, and the edges press into your skin. But you kneel before her like a knight should, and press your lips to the cold.You do this again, and again, and again. Every time she asks you to. Until it is second nature, until the press of steel against your mouth is like the kiss of a lover.It stirs something in you just like a lover should.
Relationships: Ingrid Brandl Galatea/Edelgard von Hresvelg
Comments: 15
Kudos: 158





	A feeling like devotion

You change houses on a whim. When years pass and this choice whets your blade and your hands with blood, you will beg your memories for a deeper reason. You will hope that you knew, from the start, that something was rotten in Fódlan. In the church. That you were smart enough to trace the deceit before any mask was ever ripped away. But you weren’t. You are young, and blind, and you change houses because staying in your old one felt like being chained to a past you wish you could forget, like being trapped in armour too small for you, chafing at your skin with every movement. Because a pretty girl with too-old eyes took your hand and told you that you could be a useful asset to her.

And oh, if only you knew then what you have done in her name. If only you knew the woman you would reforge yourself into, the tool you would become in order to stay close to her side.

You stumble out of the holy tomb, with stone dust in your hair, and a monster’s roar echoing in your head. You follow behind a woman in armour as she leads you all out, to run and flee like rats. With her mask gone, you know she is a liar. But she is barely half the liar that the church is, so you don’t hesitate in running after her.

It is only later, when she offers all of you the chance to run, that you realise everyone who will is already gone. They’re good people. You think. But those who remain, they’re good too. Something tears in your heart, then, like tearing out a page in a book. There is no way to be noble, not here, not now. When she settles her eyes on you, she sees beneath your skin, to the conflict in your heart. But when she extends her hand to you, you take it.

The Emperor’s gauntlets are cold, and the edges press into your skin. But you kneel before her like a knight should, and press your lips to the cold.

You do this again, and again, and again. Every time she asks you to. Until it is second nature, until the press of steel against your mouth is like the kiss of a lover.

It stirs something in you just like a lover should.

Years pass. The Empire has no knights, not like your homeland did. But the Emperor keeps you by her side as if you are one, lets you bow before her like one, scrape your skin against stone in your hunger for something like devotion.

When your father sends letters begging you to come home, when your brothers lift up arms against your cause and the man who should have been your king curses your name loud enough to be heard even in Enbarr, the Emperor takes you out into the centre of her city, and lets every merchant and traveller watch as she lays her axe on your shoulders and names you hers.

The blade rests a breath away from your neck, and when the Emperor so much as breathes, its wickedly sharp edge grazes your skin. You can feel a trickle of blood run down your neck, staining your clothes. You know that if she wanted too, she could steal your head, lift your crown from your shoulders and raise you up to her level, call you hers properly.

But she doesn’t. She pulls her axe away, and gives you a gloved hand to take. She lifts you up, and when she has you on your feet, she gives you an almost-smile that makes you feel like you are flying.

The letters stop coming. But you hear the curses still.

You thought you knew the price you would pay for choosing her. What chaining yourself to a duty you chose over a duty you were born to would mean. You thought you were strong enough to bear the whispers, the accusations from everyone who ever knew you back home.

But you never realised how it would feel to enter a battlefield and have every Kingdom soldier train their eyes on you, and know just who you are. The Emperor may have many soldiers, but she has only one General who rides a Pegasus, who still wears blue like she has a right to it. And while small towns are bad enough for cruel rumours, they hold nothing to bored soldiers on the march, with little to do other than whisper and conspire and hate.

And oh, it is one thing to hate an Imperial General. To hate someone who was born with the need to protect their nation, to follow their Emperor on her mad war. Whether they are noble or they are common, this war wasn’t their choice.

But a traitor stabs deeper still. Especially one like _you_. Who marches around with her head held high, who wears honour like a mask, hiding the rot from sight. Who abandoned her father, her country, her king, to kneel before a conqueror and kiss her blood-stained hands.

You’ve never been hated before. Not like this. Not strong enough to have grown men and women abandon strategy to seek some way to knock you out of the sky, to try to drag you back down to earth and break your wings forever.

You do your duty. You command her troops, fight her battle, kill her enemies. And when it is over, when you have torn your heart out of your chest and stitched it back together whole enough to face her again, you find your Emperor.

She thanks you. Calls you brave, calls you invaluable. A tool she could not do without. Then, with her army watching, she clips a medal to your chest, a black eagle in flight. She reaches out and touches your jaw, just for a second, and calls you hers once more. Her knight, her eagle, her Ingrid.

One day you hope she will call you that when your blood isn’t running down your neck.

You cannot find the words that you want, the ones that will unbind you, will make all this clear. So instead you place your knees on stone and your lips on steel and you silently beg a woman you barely know to forgive you for sins no one can wipe you clean from. You have never thought yourself a selfish woman, but oh, here you want, with all the fervour you can muster, to feel forgiven. To belong to something, even if the thought of belonging to someone makes you fear losing yourself.

There is no place for you to run, no step you can take that does not brand the word traitor into your skin. So, you stay, and beg your heart to believe that your Emperor’s new dawn will come, and that her new world will have space for you.

She takes you back to her room, asks you to help her escape her armour. You know this task well. When you were a child, Glenn used to indulge you, and let you play as his squire, strapping him into and out of his armour. Your Emperor wears more armour than he ever did, but it is still the same puzzle, just with more pieces.

It’s easy to believe that your Emperor is a woman made of metal, most days. To forget the girl you knew in the academy, the one with eyes too old for her face, whose nightmares were as unspoken as they were unavoidable. But with each piece of armour that you remove, your emperor shrinks, until you realise there really is a woman buried within.

She lets you take off her mail, and the padded jerkin beneath that too. Let’s you see the scrawl of scars hidden beneath, an even paler white than her skin. Some you recognise as souvenirs of war, a rough gash from an axe, a deep puncture from an arrow, the raised skin of a burn. But there are far, far more that are unfamiliar. Carved symbols, neat lines, the kind of ruthless, precise cuts one would only make on a corpse, to open it up to the world, to poke and prod and discover some secret hidden within.

Your mouth goes dry. And oh, you think you understand now, why your Emperor is not afraid of anything this war has thrown at her. Why she barely flinches when wounded, how she can face soldiers who despise her without hesitation.

“One day.” Your Emperor tells you. “I will tell you where these came from.”

You do not know what to say, so you nod, and organise her armour onto its rack, neat and whole. You wonder, almost traitorously, if your Emperor knows some kind of secret magic, to ensnare you so. To trap you with her ideals, her image of the future, with promises of a place to belong and a cause to fight for. To glue you to her side, to want to fight not only for her as a symbol, as your liege, but for her own sake.

She touches your shoulder; makes you face her. Even half undressed, your Emperor carries a strength you cannot hope to match, and when she places a hand above your armoured heart and asks you to stay by her side, you can do little other than promise you will.

You hold to your word. It’s easier than it should be. Being close to her makes you feel strong, makes you feel like there is a point to all this. That this war will not drag on forever, that you can call yourself an eagle, a knight, and not feel like a liar.

When you fight by her side, the red of her armour grounds you, and you keep it in the corner of your eye as much as you are able to.

You shouldn’t. You know you shouldn’t. You lecture your soldiers about that very thing, about letting outside distractions unroot your focus, the dangers of not keeping all your thoughts on the present moment. But you are slowly beginning to admit to yourself just how selfish you really are, and this is your one flaw, the one indulgence you allow yourself to have.

Without telling her in words, you declare yourself her personal guard. There is little that can make her stumble, few weapons that can pierce her armour, fewer still that can harm her before her axe can steal their wielder’s breath. But what little remains you destroy, making it easier for your Emperor to tear a bloody path through the field.

When an assassin approaches her, you trust her to handle it, and focus your attention on a nearby group of mages instead. It is only when you hear that awful shout of pain that you turn around, and see the armourslayer dripping red.

Later, you will wish you had thought harder about how you should protect her. That you hadn’t been quite so like yourself, and thrown yourself into the fray without pausing to think. You urge your mount to fly as fast as it can, faster than you can control, and as the assassin goes for another strike you dive to intercept it.

Your parry is off. His sword slips along your blade, and slides into your chest instead. It sneaks through the cracks in your armour, sinks in deep, deep, deep. But you were still moving, and even with your control gone, and the reigns slack in your hands, the movement tears the sword from his hands, and you keep it trapped within yourself.

You hit the ground. Hard. It jolts the sword, and the pain finally snaps into focus.

You wonder if it was worth it, as you try and fail to rise to your knees. You want it to be. It should be. It’s a noble sacrifice, just like the ones in the stories. Is this what knightly devotion feels like? A sword in your gut, a dull emptiness spreading from your stomach out, rotting you from inside? Is this the kind of knightly love they write stories about?

Why did none of them ever mention how it feels to fall into the mud, to hear the dull roar of the battle surround you, to have no strength to prevent soldiers from trampling over you? Why was it never important to note how you don't die immediately, but have to lie there knowing you can't protect yourself any longer, let alone the woman you did all this for?

You don’t want to die. It’s pitiful, how long it took you to realise that. This is about as close to a noble death as someone like you can ever hope to have, and yet you still do not want it.

You hear footfalls near your head, and you clench your teeth, anticipating the slide of a sword between your ribs, the theft of your last fleeting desire.

Instead, you feel someone pick you up, strong but gentle. And oh, you were wrong. Devotion feels like this. It feels like Edelgard’s strong arms wrapped around you, lifting you off the ground as the universe spins in your mind.

"Hold on." She whispers, soft but echoing throughout your head, the one thing you can focus on. "Hold on, hold on, hold on."

Devotion feels a lot like love, in the end.

You do not know how long you are unconscious for. But you wake strapped in bandages, with Manuela prodding at your stomach.

She keeps you on bed rest for another week. It’s stifling, being trapped in this room. You cannot remember the last time you had stopped moving for this long, where you didn’t at least have training to devote yourself to.

You have visitors at least, but the gaps in their company leave you restless. Almost everyone stops by at least once. Hubert and Ferdinand bring you paperwork to bore yourself with, and you cannot tell if they are being cruel or kind with that gift. Petra, Caspar, and Lindhardt all bring you meals, and try to entertain you with stories. Lindhardt stays the longest, and you let him sleep on your bed until it stops being amusing, and you prod him awake.

Lysithea is kind, for once. She sneaks you sweets when Manuela is out, and when you tell her she should eat less of them herself, she does not snap back at you like she normally would.

Even Bernadetta visits. Once. She drops off her repair of your clothes, and you thumb at where the tear in them once was, impressed by how difficult it is to notice.

Dorothea just brings herself. But it is better than Edelgard, who does not visit at all.

“You never do anything by half measures, do you?” Dorothea says. Ingrid can’t read her tone. Dorothea rarely lets herself be read.

“There’s no use in anything less than that.” You say.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Okay?”

“Just.” Dorothea sighs, drawn out and painful. It speaks more than her words do. “Don’t go trying to throw your life away because you think that’s what you _ought to do_ , you know? For her sake, if not your own.”

“Um.” You pause for a moment, wonder if this is what you look like to an outside observer. A silly girl playing at being a knight, more focused on dying than living well. The thought rots in your stomach. “Is that what she thinks I was doing?” You ask quietly. “I haven’t seen her.”

“Oh.” Dorothea says. You look up, and she is watching you, her expression sad, even while she forces a smile onto her lips. “That’s what this is.”

“Dorothea, can you please speak plainly?”

“You are allowed to want.” Dorothea says. “You do realise that, right? You are still human, you know.”

“I still don’t understand.” You say. But oh, this time you do. This time Dorothea is all too easy to read, and her words are as plain as they could be. But the pity in her voice chafes at your skin, and cuts too close to something you have not yet admitted to yourself, let alone another.

Dorothea pats your hand. “You will.”

Even she leaves. And then it is just you. Alone to yourself. There is little here capable of distracting you from your boredom, and most feels designed to drive you mad. Hubert’s papers are dry, and tedious, and as often as you force yourself to look at them, you can never get more than a page in before dropping them.

Caspar had brought you books from the library when you asked him, indulged you in the same dramatic tales of knights and heroes you had loved as a girl. But oh, you thought your love for them was unconditional. That the stories that had raised you, drilled in concepts of duty, of honour, of a kind of love you die for, could not change.

But the first one you had opened you only got halfway through before a knight had died with a sword in her hands and a smile on her face, and a strange kind of panic had shot through you, and you could read no longer.

Driven half mad by this torture, you beg Manuela to free you a day early. It’s unbecoming, how you insist on it. But Manuela seems more amused by your plight than worried for your health, so she agrees, after warning you that if she finds you in the training grounds reopening your wounds, she will drag you back here herself. It’s not a threat you take lightly.

Freedom tastes sweet. With Manuela’s threat hanging over your head, much of what you’d like to do is barred from access. But to be able to walk again, wherever you would like, is reward enough that you find yourself on a circuit around the monastery. By the second lap, having greeted almost everyone who is still here, that restless feeling has returned, without reason or cause.

You pass Ferdinand, marching past with a leaflet of papers gripped in his hand, and stop him, asking if he has seen Edelgard.

“She’s in a meeting.” He tells her. “I’m sure she’s glad to see you up and moving again!”

You swallow your reply, and Ferdinand breezes off before you can dig it out again.

It stops your restless pacing, at least. You find other things to busy yourself with, checking on your personal battalion, your Pegasus, even retreating to the library to sort the books inside. You feel better with tasks to focus on, and you grab onto each chance to help as soon as it arises.

But night falls, and there is nothing left for you to distract yourself with. You try to sleep instead, but after a week your room feels too small, too quiet. You miss the sound of Manuela quietly working in the corner, of her checking your temperature, your heartbeat.

You have to escape. You return to that same awful impulse from this morning, patrolling the grounds of the monastery. Except now, you find what you had been searching for.

Edelgard stands on the pier with her back to you. She is out of her armour for once, in a silk nightgown, and her hair is loose and cascades down her back, picking up the moonlight and trapping it. You stop for a moment, wondering when you last saw Edelgard unarmoured outside of her room. Before the war even began, probably.

She tilts her head towards you before you can think to leave, and you approach her, The timber of the pier creaking with every step.

“Ingrid.” She says. You have missed the way she says your name, carefully, like it deserves respect. “You have recovered?”

“Manuela believes so.” You tell her.

“Hmm.” Edelgard turns towards you. It’s funny, you think, how different she looks when she is not holding herself like the Emperor should. It’s small changes. Without the weight of her crown, her shoulders are held lighter, her expression looser. And without the bulk of her armour hiding her form from sight, she looks much more like the girl you did all this for. The one who ignored the hordes of important nobles to lead you away from the ball, to find some hidden corner and ask the biting questions that put you on this path to begin with.

_What will you do when your time at the monastery is over?_ She had asked. _You will abandon your dreams? Languish for the sake of your father’s will? Did you know there is a place in the Empire for someone like you?_

It had been intense, to stand there with her eyes burning through your skin and into your heart. She didn’t even know you then. But it felt like she did. And when she had started to tell you about her dreams, the future she wanted to build, the thought that you could help her make it come true had been enough.

And maybe you had never considered the consequences then. But you have made your choice. And made it again, and again, and again. In whatever future that comes, you are hers.

You try to kneel in front of her, but she stops you. “Not tonight.” She commands.

You want to ask her why she did not visit you. Why it felt like she was avoiding you all day, that only coincidence allowed you to see her now. The words have almost escaped you, until she brushes her fingers against your jaw. She is not wearing gloves, or gauntlets. The feeling of her bare hands against your skin makes a flush rise up your neck, and you pray she does not notice.

“My knight.” She says, twisting the words as she says them, like they taste bitter. “My eagle. Do not do that again.”

“My Emperor-” You start, but she cuts you off.

“It may have been brave.” Edelgard says. “But I do not want to lift your corpse off a battlefield.”

“You were hurt.” You try to argue. “I would be a poor knight if I let that happen.”

Her mouth twists down, and you watch it, and wish she would let you sink to your knees and beg for her forgiveness, like a knight should.

“I should thank you for protecting me.” She thumbs at your jaw, and you cannot stop the shiver that passes through your body. “But I fear that would set a precedent. That you will continue to act like that, that one day you will fall and never rise again.”

You remember what Dorothea said. All of what she said. And you swallow, and meet Edelgard’s piercing gaze. “I do not intend to throw my life away.” You tell her.

Edelgard smiles. It is only for an instant, only just long enough for you to recognise it, but you believe it to be genuine.

“I would like to have you by my side for a few years longer.” She tells you. “I still have need of you.”

“I am yours, for as long as you will have me.”

Edelgard takes your hand, lifts it to her mouth and presses a kiss against your knuckles.

“I will hold you to that.” She tells you.

And oh, Dorothea was right. It would be easier if she wasn’t. But you cannot deny it any longer, not like this.

It would be smarter to wait. To pause, to consider, to plan. But you are nothing if not yourself. Reckless and blind, lecturing others for their mistakes all while you throw caution to the wind.

“Edelgard,” you start, “am I just your knight?”

Your words make her freeze in place. Turn her back into metal, rust her joints and leave her immobile. Your hand is still held in hers, still close to her mouth. You can feel her breath against your skin.

You wonder just where the line between devotion and love lies. If a line truly exists. How can such a thing blur? Did Glenn, your Glenn, the man he was not the man you thought he was, ever struggle with something like this?

You wanted to be him for so long. To belong to an ideal. To fight and die for a liege you believed in. You’ve done a pretty poor job at that. Glenn would not have been afraid to die, like you were. Glenn would not have betrayed his kingdom either, even if he had smelt the rot swelling beneath the surface. And Glenn would not have let himself dare to hope that his liege would care for him more than he deserved.

But oh, you are not him. And for once, you are glad that you are not. That you could be human enough to diverge from the path laid out for you, that you could make every choice that led you to this moment.

Edelgard is a woman beneath the crown, the armour. And she is brave enough to let you know that woman still exists. She can be stubborn, and obtuse, but you like to think that you know her. When she lifts your hand back to her lips, you let yourself smile.

“We may have more to speak about.” Edelgard murmurs. “Will you join me?”

It is easy to say yes.

She takes you back to her room. It’s unbefitting of an Emperor, tiny and plain. Since your days at the academy, the only change is the rack of armour squashed into the corner, that her desk is covered in maps and not textbooks. Most of her desk. Your curiosity is too strong to stop you from flipping over a sheet of thick paper, surprised to find not another letter or map but a sketched drawing in rough charcoal, a woman with short hair blown away by the wind, strong and dignified and- Oh.

“That’s-” Edelgard takes the page from your hands. “It’s not finished.”

“Is that me?” You ask.

She flushes, and turns away from you, hides the page under one of her maps. “It’s a frivolous hobby.” She says.

You step in closer. You wonder if she will ever answer any of your questions, whether she hates the answers or enjoys being an enigma to you. You wonder why you do not mind.

This time, when she traces her fingers down the side of your face, it feels different. More honest. You lean into her touch, desperate for it.

This is more than you have ever had, even if this is not much. For so long you had Glenn, less a man and more a far-off promise, an inevitability and not a relationship. And you lost him before you could have him at all. You wonder if it is right, to let someone else touch you in a way he never could. You wonder if you loved him at all, if you could ever know if you did.

When she leans in, you follow her lead. It’s soft, at first. But something stirs in you, like devotion, like hunger. And you twist your hands in her collar and pull her closer. You will talk later, you think. For now, you just _want_.

She leads you to her bed, and you hesitate. “I will not push you.” Edelgard promises. “But would you stay with me?”

_Are you enough?_ You ask yourself. _Do you dare to try? Do you deserve the chance?_

You place your hands on silk, your lips on skin, and pray that you do.

**Author's Note:**

> I've seen a bit of criticism of Ingrid being recruitable to crimson flower given her whole "I want to be a knight" thing and while I get the thought behind it (especially bc the game itself doesn't devote much energy into explaining this).... To me it's a lot more interesting to think through what would make a character like that change sides, and how that betrayal would affect her... especially bc ingrid is less "bound by duty" than "wanting to be bound by duty" which gives her a lot more flexibility of choice than say, Catherine. Anyway. I had a lot of fun with this fic lol


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